Watch Your Wake

Instead of dog droppings, my longtime friend and teacher Angeles Arrien puts it more elegantly: “Watch your wake.”  A “wake” is the wave pattern or turbulence on the water’s surface caused by a moving object, like a boat.  If you have been in a boat on a lake when a larger and/or faster boat moves past you, you know how much disturbance exists in its wake. In recent meetings, I was reminded about the impact … Read more…

Anger and Emotional Contagion

Sometimes I wonder if I am being naïve. Does how we talk to one another really matter? Maybe I just pay too much attention to the news: it seems so many of us are yelling at one another (politicians and political pundits); committing mass shootings (the latest is Roseburg); imprisoning and raping women, destroying antiquities, and holding people and territory hostage (ISIS is currently emblematic). What evokes this anger and aggression? The primitive parts of … Read more…

Emotions: the bane or the boon of our meetings

Perhaps you are reading this just after returning to your desk from a “bad” meeting. You feel frustrated, or even angry, because you think your ideas were ignored and/or nothing was accomplished. Emotions are a powerful force in our interactions. They wield more influence over the quality of our meetings than any other variable. They can turn a conversation among colleagues or neighbors either into a snarling, polarizing, and enervating event or into a joyful, … Read more…